12/31/2007

It is time for this blog’s fifth annual review of the performance of the Los Angeles Times, which long-time Patterico readers know as the Los Angeles Dog Trainer. Previous annual reviews can be found at these links:

This year’s installment covers a number of topics, including the 2008 election, the U.S. Attorney scandal, and many others. It summarizes an entire year’s worth of work documenting omissions, distortions, and misrepresentations by this newspaper. The evidence is voluminous, but hopefully entertaining. If you have half as much fun reading this as I did writing it, you’ll enjoy this post considerably.

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Without further ado, let’s get to the bias:

Nothing says “institutional arrogance” better than sticking with a story you know is wrong. So I have decided to open this year’s edition with two blatant examples of this newspaper deliberately misleading its readers.

In a third incident, Serrano was accused of misquotation by one of the fired USAs, Bud Cummins. Mr. Cummins later personally wrote me and specifically told me that he had told Serrano the story was wrong.

Above: Bud Cummins told me: “I promise you the story was wrong.” The L.A. Times didn’t care.

This is the worst kind of “gotcha” journalism. Cummins had no reason to lie about the misquotation. Moreover, he told me that he had been interviewed by reporters across the country, and nobody else had gotten the story so badly wrong. The paper’s editors knew — knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt — that the subject of their interview said their story was wrong. Still, they didn’t care to tell readers the truth.

TIM RUTTEN MISLEADS READERS ON SCOTT THOMAS BEAUCHAMP

Another stunning example of institutional hubris occurred when Tim Rutten wrote an error-filled column about Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Beauchamp was a U.S. soldier in Iraq whose accounts of soldiers’ misdeeds were published in The New Republic and later questioned by several bloggers. Rutten’s lazy column about Beauchamp contained five provably false assertions. Among his errors was the claim that Beauchamp hadn’t spoken to TNR editors for weeks. Rutten also falsely maintained that a document related to the Beauchamp investigation, called a “Memorandum for Record,” did not exist.

Above: Tim Rutten says this document doesn’t exist. The L.A. Times is backing him up.

Making the mistakes wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was that the paper didn’t correct a single one of these errors. Further, the paper employed obvious sophistry to justify its refusal to correct the mistakes. The most shocking to me was the fact that, although TNR had admitted only an “error,” Rutten said that TNR had admitted an aspect of Beauchamp’s story had been “concocted.” An “error” and a “concoction” are obviously two very different things. I couldn’t believe that the Readers’ Rep, whose job revolves around correcting errors, couldn’t see the difference. If the paper called every error a “concoction,” then the paper’s editors have “concocted” plenty of things themselves.

Next: a return to traditional topics, including anti-Republican/conservative and pro-Democrat/liberal bias in all facets of the news — starting with the current 2008 presidential campaign.

ELECTION 2008

In a story about the Republican YouTube debate, the paper wrote a story that tried to downplay the extensive connections between several questioners and Democrat candidates. That story said one Obama supporter had blogged for Obama on a “social networking site” — as if he had been extolling Obama’s virtues on, say, Facebook or MySpace. The paper didn’t tell readers that the “social networking site” in question was BarackObama.com — Obama’s official campaign web site.

Above: A mere “social networking site” with no discernable connection to a candidate for President.

By contrast, the paper has been especially hostile to Fred Thompson. The editors ran a so-called analysis of Fred Thompson’s prosecutorial career — but omitted statistics that deprived the story of critical context, allowing editors to be more sensationalistic about his alleged failures.

Bad.

Good.

The editors’ view of the presidential candidates.

The paper ran a story with the unnecessarily provocative and unfair headline: “Will Fred Thompson’s racist role have political repercussions?” The article exaggerated the significance of Thompson’s fictional TV role. For example, according to the article, when I had asked how Fred Thompson might get smeared, my commenters had “immediately” mentioned Fred Thompson’s “racist role” in an old TV show. “Immediately” turned out to mean “in comment 35 of 38 comments.”

The paper had once claimed that Sandy Berg(l)er had taken no original documents, but this year it emerged that we don’t know that. The paper had no immediate coverage of this revelation.

Barbara Boxer took a jab at Condi Rice for not having any kids — certainly an embarrassing gaffe. The paper had no coverage of that — even though the New York Times did. Similarly, late in the year, Nancy Pelosi had an embarrassing moment when she said that Republicans “like” the Iraq war. The L.A. Timesdidn’t seem to notice.

The paper’s protection of Democrats extended to several other figures. The editors characterized a legitimate ad against Harold Ford, Jr. as “racially tinged.” The paper waited until after “Dirty Harry” Reid was safely re-elected to report on one of his questionable land deals. And the editors published an entire article about Bush’s use of the word “Democrat” as an adjective describing Democrats. It’s offensive, dontcha know.

The pro-Democrat spin was never so silly as when the editors touted an obviously lame study claiming that Democrats have superior brains. I’m sure they would have been equally uncritical if the findings had been the opposite . . .

ANTI-REPUBLICAN BIAS

The flip side of pro-Democrat bias is anti-Republican bias, and once again, the editors did not disappoint. The paper deliberately implied that Dick Cheney had leaked Valerie Plame’s identity — saving for the back pages the fact that there was no evidence of this. And the paper blatantly misstated the sixteen words from President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address. I called them on it, providing clear proof of their error — but they refused to issue a correction.

The editors’ bias was evident in whom they relied on as experts. Who better to go to for a quote than Larry Johnson? He’s the guy who once made the charming comment that Karl Rove’s mother had killed herself because she hated Rove so much.

THE EDITORS AND THE INTERNET: THROWING OFF THE BUNKER MENTALITY? NOT QUITE . . .

In January, the paper announced it was going to work on its Web presence. An L.A. Times article said:

[Los Angeles Times Editor James E.] O’Shea employed dire statistics on declining advertising to urge The Times’ roughly 940 journalists to throw off a “bunker mentality” against change and to begin viewing latimes.com as the paper’s primary vehicle for delivering news.

But some questioned O’Shea’s commitment to shedding the “bunker mentality” when the paper unveiled its new Internet Headquarters:

Above: the new L.A. Times Internet Headquarters.

In all seriousness, when the paper announced it was expanding its Web presence, I offered some suggestions, mostly revolving around greater communication and openness.

But the paper didn’t listen to me, and the editors’ flirtations with the Internet continued to lack transparency — as became evident during the Episode of the Comments That Never Appeared at the Readers’ Rep Blog . . . and also during the Saga of the Amazing Disappearing Blog Post.

The Episode of the Comments That Never Appeared at the Readers’ Rep Blog

You’d think that if any blog at a newspaper’s Web site allowed critical comments, it would be the blog of the ombudsman, whose job it is to field complaints about the paper’s coverage. Allowing critical comments in that space would provide a laudable and transparent forum for discussing the paper’s shortcomings, with the goal of improving the paper’s fairness. Sorry, not at this newspaper.

In fact, when we last checked in at the Readers’ Rep blog in December, the latest post — I kid you not — was a “roundup of kudos” for the paper. How very hard-hitting! As for comments . . . well, there had been only two comments posted during the previous month.

So much for Jim O’Shea’s pledge to throw off a “bunker mentality” against change . . .

The Saga of the Amazing Disappearing Blog Post

The Saga of the Amazing Disappearing Blog Post occurred in October, when an L.A. Times blog post about John Edwards’s alleged extramarital affair mysteriously disappeared. I e-mailed the blogger about it — and while he didn’t respond to my e-mail, the blog post reappeared minutes later, in an abbreviated format. The blogger had previously left comments about how it would be “censorship” not to discuss the issue. Oddly, even when the post reappeared, his comments about “censorship” had disappeared.

Down the memory hole!

Further investigation revealed more and more and even more passages that had been deleted. There had been so many deletions and other odd occurrences that I decided to do a timeline. I thought the editors needed to do a disclosure to explain what had happened. Because I am always looking to help out the editors, I wrote a suggested disclosure for them. The paper did finally come clean — but it was clear it had taken my pushing to accomplish this.

In their original article about Lam, the editors questioned the timing of an investigation of Jerry Lewis, which the paper described as an expansion of the Cunningham investigation. But the Lewis investigation was done, not by Lam in San Diego, but by Debra Yang in Los Angeles — a fact that undercut the editors’ theory.

The paper’s view of executive privilege was remarkably malleable, depending on the circumstances. Were the Democrats likely to overcome Bush’s claim of executive privilege relating to the U.S. Attorney controversy? The answer was “yes” when it helped the Democrats to answer the question “yes” — and “no” when it helped Democrats to say “no.”

PRO-TAXATION ATTITUDES

It’s always fun to read the way the L.A. Times talks about tax cuts, or tax revenue that might be lost when courts rule a tax illegal. The paper always adopts the view that the loss of tax revenue is the end of the world, and will force dramatic and devastating cuts that cannot be withstood. For example, the paper portrayed an illegal phone tax as a venerable tax that couldn’t be lost. It was entertaining to compare how other publications treated the same issues. Hint: they were far more even-handed.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Columnist Rosa Brooks saw only one difference between legal and illegal immigrants: their level of courage. The idea that their legal or illegal status might be important apparently did not occur to her.

A story was published that conflated the difference between legal and illegal immigrants — leading to a rare correction.

GAY MARRIAGE

I support gay marriage, but unlike the editors of The Times, I try not to let my biases interfere with basic common sense. Ignoring this principle, the editors published an ignorant editorial that castigated Arnold Schwarzenegger for not signing an illegal law establishing gay marriage. The law had a basic constitutional flaw, as it would have attempted to reverse a ballot initiative without a referendum, in violation of the California Constitution. Blogger Xrlq persisted in seeking a correction, but none was forthcoming.

The paper initially downplayed black-on-white hate crimes in Long Beach, assigning a low priority to the story, and running articles deriding the prosecution evidence. The minors were later found guilty (in the jargon used in juvenile court, the petitions against them were sustained).

There was another prison race riot early in the year — further evidence of the editors’ naivete when they claimed that it would be “preposterous” to argue that there is a compelling need to segregate prisoners by race in these modern times.

This is the third year in a row that the Year in Review has discussed the Myth of the Church That Lost Its Tax-Exempt Status Over an Anti-War Sermon. That’s because this is the third year in a row that the paper has run a misleading story on the topic.

DAVID SAVAGE AND LIBERAL BIAS ON SUPREME COURT COVERAGE

In writing his roundup of the Supreme Court’s term, the paper’s legal affairs reporter David Savage was a complete drama queen — overselling the concept of a New Conservative Hegemony at the Court, and distorting the facts in the process.

Savage wrote another scare piece about how Scalia’s views could become the majority. As it turned out, Scalia ended up in the majority in many of the cases Savage mentioned — but Scalia’s views often weren’t joined by Justices Alito and Roberts. (For example, Scalia and Thomas said they would overrule Roe v. Wade. Alito and Roberts refused to join that portion of Scalia’s opinion.) The fact that Alito and Roberts were more moderate and restrained than Scalia didn’t prevent the paper from printing a dishonest screed by Erwin Chemerinsky that falsely suggested that Justices Roberts and Alito were extremist conservatives.

This newspaper’s bias in favor of criminal defendants and against police is well-documented. One particularly flagrant example emerged when we learned about a man whom the L.A. Times had lionized in 2005 as an ex-gang member who had supposedly turned his life around. This year, the L.A. Weekly revealed several interesting allegations about the man’s background. According to police, for example, this “ex-gang member” was an active Mexican Mafia gang member who had ordered a hit on a police informant. Six months later, the L.A. Times finally reported the information on the “ex-gang member” — but didn’t mention anything about the puff piece they had run on him two years earlier. Best to keep that part quiet.

When the LAPD released the transcript of the Board of Rights hearing in the Devin Brown shooting — a hearing that exonerated the officer — the paper initially buried the story. The paper’s subsequent stories repeatedly emphasized the secrecy of the proceedings, although the editors had seemed perfectly satisfied with the equally secret Police Commission proceedings. What was the difference? The editors liked the Police Commission proceedings, because they had resulted in a ruling against the officer.

In a story about a confrontation between the LAPD and protesters at an illegal immigration rally in MacArthur park, the paper listed the casualties — but failed to mention the injuries sustained by officers. The editors later issued a correction, forced to acknowledge that, yes, officers’ injuries count, too.

In June, when it became clear that a gang crackdown had prevented murders, the paper praised the crackdown — even though editors had criticized the crackdown just months earlier.

For years, the paper had pushed for a change in the LAPD’s shooting policy that would bar officers from firing at cars driving at them, in most situations. Inevitably, a case came up where the new policy may have caused an officer to be shot. I didn’t trust the paper to investigate the question.

ANTI-POLICE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT ATTITUDES: THE L.A. TIMES LIONIZES CONVICTED FELON STEPHEN YAGMAN

Above: convicted felon Stephen Yagman is a darling of the L.A. Times.

The paper’s anti-law enforcement attitude was never so egregious as when the paper carried water for civil rights attorney (and now convicted felon) Stephen Yagman. Yagman, a civil rights attorney who filed hundreds of cases against the LAPD, quickly became a favorite of the folks at the L.A. Times. Yagman said the things about the LAPD and conservative judges that the editors wished they could say out loud. This year, Yagman was convicted of over a dozen felonies, with a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But The Timesbarely covered Yagman’s trial, leaving the real work to the L.A. Weekly. When Yagman was convicted, the paper did what it always does in stories about him: it repeated his baseless slanders against conservative figures (including a judge I clerked for) as if those slanders had merit.

After his conviction, the paper still treated Yagman as a respectable figure. The editors managed to quote Yagman in a story about overcrowding at the L.A. County jail — without mentioning that Yagman wasn’t then a practicing attorney, because he had been convicted of thirteen felonies. Would the paper have shown similar courtesy to a notoriously right-wing attorney? Not on your life.

Crime reporter Jill Leovy started the Homicide Blog, which tracks all homicides in Los Angeles. Leovy has generally been one of the bright spots at the paper — and proved it again in a great piece called “Their Names Die with Them.”

There was also plenty of space to list every soldier from every state in the nation killed in Iraq — in the California section. Why was a political statement about out-of-state soldiers’ deaths worthy of space in the “California” section of a Los Angeles newspaper, when there was no room for a story about a murdered girl from Compton, in Los Angeles County, California?

(For what it’s worth, I did think Ms. Hilton’s fame bought her slightly harsher treatment from City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo — and when Rocky’s wife turned out to have some suspended license problems of her own, it was a positively joyous experience to watch Steve Lopez knocking Rocky around.)

The editors repeated their utterly clueless call for peremptories to be removed from the jury selection process in criminal trials.

OP-ED: NIXING DUNPHY WHILE SAVING SPACE FOR NONSENSE

The anonymous LAPD officer and excellent writer going by the name “Jack Dunphy” had yet another column nixed by the paper. As far as I can tell, Dunphy no longer writes for The Times— but thanks to my “lower standards,” he does blog here sometimes. Three cheers for my “lower standards”!

Although the paper didn’t seem to have room for Dunphy, it did somehow manage to find room for a laughably embarrassing “op-ad” by a sewer pipe company CEO, talking about our country’s need to replace sewer pipes. It later emerged that the CEO had placed similar op-ads in papers across the country, all seeking to create demand for his repiping services. The L.A. Times was simply the latest victim of the CEO’s astroturfing publicity campaign.

Honorable but anonymous cops apparently don’t qualify as publishable authors, but sock puppeteers just might. Jim Newton, the new editorial page editor, said that he would “absolutely” consider making Glenn Greenwald a columnist. Hey, Michael Hiltzik is still putting out articles on Page One; why shouldn’t Rick Ellensburg get in on the act?

Also, the editors continued to insist on publishing Erwin Chemerinsky, and Erwin Chemerinsky continued to insist on saying things that weren’t true. I mentioned one example above, in the section on the judiciary. Chemerinsky also said in an op-ed that Daryl Gates had always blamed the Rodney King beating on Rodney King, when in fact, Gates had believed the King officers had engaged in excessive force. (By the way, Chemerinsky, like the Times editors, is a big fan of Stephen Yagman. No surprise there; all these people are peas in a leftist pod.)

Patterico commenter David Ehrenstein appeared in the pages of the paper, calling Barack Obama a “Magic Negro.” Your view of this op-ed probably depends on your view of Ehrenstein. I have a soft spot for the guy.

The paper’s editorials are always very serious and geared towards weighty topics — like the one about Sanjaya.

Despite the sometimes uneven quality of the op-ed section, I have always maintained that it is perhaps the strongest section of the paper — the place where the paper’s hidebound institutional bias is less pervasive than it is on the news pages. I was something of a fan of editorial page editor Andres Martinez — and when he had an online chat, I asked my readers to participate. (None of you bothered. Lazy bastards.)

Unfortunately, Martinez ended up resigning over a silly flap revolving around his decision to give a “guest editor” spot to Hollywood producer Brian Grazer. It emerged that Grazer was represented by the same P.R. firm that Martinez’s girlfriend worked for. Even though she had not personally represented Grazer (a fact that many didn’t seem to understand), the section was scrapped, and Martinez resigned.

After Martinez resigned, there was a brief but entertaining period of chaos as Martinez and his loyalists said some surprisingly candid things about the paper. Martinez himself issued an eye-opening statement blasting the newsroom’s “agenda” and snidely referring to the paper’s “ostensibly objective news reporters and editors.” The paper’s Tim Cavanaugh followed suit with some unusually frank observations about the paper’s culture. The New York Times‘s David Carr talked about how warring factions in the newsroom used blogs to fight each other.

I was popping a lot of popcorn around this time, and just generally sitting back and enjoying the fun.

As admittedly delightful as all of this was, the whole Grazergate thing really didn’t seem like much of a scandal. After all, if the editors were truly concerned about the things that matter, they wouldn’t have been so concerned with Andres Martinez and guest editors and girlfriends who were P.R. flacks. Instead, they would have saved their concern for the fact that their paper was habitually lying to its readers.

Accordingly, I began to suspect that the real underlying issue was an ideological coup by leftists seeking to maintain liberal control over the op-ed pages. My theory gained strength when Martinez himself appeared to endorse this theory — and named the people who had convinced publisher David Hiller to scrap the section.

The people whom Martinez fingered as the architects of his demise were leftists like Tim Rutten and Henry Weinstein. Rutten denied that a cabal of leftists had swayed Hiller; according to Rutten, Hiller had seen the problem right away. But there were a few problems with Rutten’s story. First, Hiller himself told the New York Times that he had to be convinced . . . by a group of leftists including Tim Rutten. The idea that Hiller was super-sensitive to perceived conflicts took another hit when it was revealed that, for a guest editor spot, publisher Hiller had suggested Donald Rumsfeld — his former squash partner. That didn’t seem like a big ethical violation, but it seemed pretty goofy — and it undercut Rutten’s version of events considerably.

The paper promised to do an internal investigation into the matter to see whether Martinez had compromised the integrity of the op-ed page. Months later, in early October, I wondered what had happened to the report. It turned out that the internal investigation revealed that Martinez had done nothing wrong — but, inexplicably, this was never published in the L.A. Times. In a bizarre twist, the fact that an L.A. Times editor had done nothing wrong ended up being published first on my blog.

COLUMNISTS: TIM RUTTEN

In addition to the dishonest columns already discussed, Tim Rutten had some other notably misleading columns.

Tim Rutten, November 3, 2007: “[Michael Mukasey] refuses to flatly say that the United States of America should not torture people.”

Michael Mukasey, October 18, 2007: “Torture is unlawful under the laws of this country. It is not what this country is all about. It is not what this country stands for. It’s antithetical to everything this country stands for.”

I’m sure Rutten has some “baroque” explanation for this.

For example, Rutten claimed that Rush Limbaugh’s defense of his “phony soldiers” remark was “baroque.” Not unless “baroque” has been redefined to mean “simple and straightforward.” Rutten may have had an equally “baroque” explanation for his claim that Michael Mukasey refused to say whether torture was illegal, when Mukasey expressly had.

Above: Joel Stein, pondering his defense to charges of ripping off his column ideas from blogs.

FINANCIAL WOES AND PERSONNEL LOSSES

Early in the year, it was clear the paper was going to be sold. David Geffen talked about buying the paper. He’s so moderate, he thinks the Clintons are fascists! The paper was ultimately sold to Sam Zell.

But Zell couldn’t stop the paper’s continuing problems with plummeting circulation. In June, the paper put a Band-Aid on its financial woes with a voluntary buyout program. Fully 57 staffers took the voluntary buyout, including a couple of my favorites: Bob Sipchen and Roy Rivenburg.

The paper became so desperate for revenue, it decided to sell ad space on the front page, prompting me to observe: “Deaths are harder to watch when they’re slow.”

In an apparent attempt to increase its circulation numbers, the editors keep trying to give away free papers. When another free edition of the paper landed on my doorstep, I wondered: do the stalking laws apply to this behavior?

A former L.A. Times reporter admitted to lying to get a story. I would have been happier if he just hadn’t lied to readers.

GETTING BEATEN BY THE COMPETITION

Under Jill Stewart, the news section of the L.A. Weeklykicked the L.A. Times around on local stories. For example, the L.A. Weekly investigated the case of a firefighter who sued the city for millions because he was fed a couple of bites of dog food in a prank. The L.A. Weekly detailed the firefighter’s own history of pranking other firefighters, while the L.A. Times slept.

The paper got beat on the local story of Mayor Villaraigosa’s affair. Finally, the paper that kept getting scooped by Luke Ford decided to publish Luke Ford. If you can’t beat ’em, co-opt ’em!

Above: the paper was scooped on the story about the mayor’s girlfriend.

An L.A. drug ring was funnelling money to Hezbollah — and this was reported, not by the L.A. Times, but by a New York paper.

MISTAKES, WE MAKE MISTAKES

The paper made numerous mistakes — but so do we all. What made the paper’s mistakes notable is the way that they tended to benefit the left side of the political spectrum. For example, the paper smeared the Swift Vet group by falsely claiming that they had coordinated their activities with the GOP. I told the paper about this error the day the article came out, and spoon-fed them the proof — not bad for a crab-grass blogger — but it still took them nine days to issue the correction

The material in this post was collected from last year’s posts from this blog. If you are disgusted by the L.A. Times, and/or you have enjoyed this post, you’ll want to become a regular reader. Please remember to bookmark the main page and return often. And I’ll end with another plug for Bloglines subscribers. Remember that you can subscribe by clicking on this button:

P.S. Thanks to DRJ and See Dubya for reading drafts of this post and making valuable edits and suggestions.

P.P.S. Thanks to rhodeymark for pointing out a typo in the section on race. (I initially wrote the crimes were white-on-black. As rhodeymark notes, “if that were true, they would still be running A1 stories about it.” Heh.) And aunursa caught my error in saying that the California legislature voted to “ban” gay marriage, when of course they voted to legalize it. Thanks to these commenters, I was able to correct these typos within hours, as opposed to the 9-13 days it seems to take the L.A. Times to correct their errors.

Good Morning and Happy New Year! Great round-up and presentation again this year. “The more things change…”. A comprehensive and damning indictment of the nation’s most disingenuous “news” source. One nit I noticed was under the section RACE. You described the Long Beach Halloween crime as white-on-black. We know that if that were true, they would still be running A1 stories about it.
Thanks for a great read.

Mr Ehrenstein, calling it the “Democrat Party” hardly seems a terrible insult, especially considering what passes for humor from our friends on the left: “Rethuglcan,””Repukelican,””Repuglickin,” and the like.

You probably object to my usage of the junior senator from Illinois’ full name, too!

David, it’s just improper to call the Democrat’s party the Democratic Party. It implies too much, because it’s an adjective (in the descriptive way, not the identifying way). I just think it makes more sense to call it the Democrat party, since it is a party of Democrats.

I never understood why anyone would worship their party enough to think it was blasphemed. Both sides have a bit of tit, but seeing who bristles at “democrat party” is always a great way to filter people. Even the president of the USA calls it the democrat party. It’s an accepted term now. Googling “Democrat Party” takes me to their website straight away. Life is good.

Patterico, this is a great feature. I’ll probably be reading it all day. The LA Times must really love you.

Do you Dems realize that the DemocRAT party’s mascot is a Jackass? Is that just too fitting to bother you? When the Democrats leave their Marxist/Socialist agenda behind, I might start calling them Democratic, but in the meantime …

I seem to recall an old sketch of “Coffee Talk with Linda Richmond” on Saturday Night Live — you know, the one with Michael Meyers playing a woman. He used to go to breaks by giving his viewers a sentence and telling them to “discuss among yourselves.” One of them was the following:

You know perfectly well why they like to call it “The Democrat Party,” Chuck. And so does our host.

I’m sure our host does, and Chuck probably does, too, but it’s plain as day that you don’t, else you wouldn’t have taken the bait, as you Democrat/icks predictably do. Here’s a free clue, not to be spent in one place: there’s only one thing more entertaining than watching a Democrat/ick come unglued when his party is attacked on substance, and that is watching the same Democrat/ick come equally unglued over a trivial detail no remotely rational person would give a tinker’s damn about. Thank you for providing said entertainment.

Here’s one from an ex-Republican with a name (never could figure out how Mom came up with “Another”?)…
I find it vastly amusing that Rush put DE’s “Magic Nergro” before more people than the LAT could ever hope to, and does it on almost a daily basis as long as Obama is in the race;

Becks’ hasn’t done soccer any favors here in the Colonies, but does make us long for a good “Tab” in LA;

Excellent! I hope Sam Zell hires you as a consultant; I want a decent paper. I felt a sharp ping of nostalgia as I glanced over the Calendar section at Starbuck’s today but I will never purchase the present rag and support those lying so-and-so’s.

I think it’s time for a Top 10 Reasons Not to Read the LA Times–sort of an all time lowlights list.

My pick for no. 1: the photoshopped picture of the US soldier making it look like he’s pointing his rifle at a woman’s head.

“If Zell is looking for an editor and you are tired of prosecuting, maybe David would put a word in for you.”

Mike K,

Some of my leftist readers may *think* I’m a complete moron — but I am nowhere near as brain-dead as I would have to be to work at the L.A. Times.

If I ever look like I’m going to give up a six-figure salary with civil service protection for an at-will job where 98 percent of the people hate my guts going in — just shoot me before I sign the contract.

Shoot to wound, not to kill — but seriously, shoot me. I’ll need the wake-up call.

Leave to me to notice something completely off-topic, but just as a matter of interest, the bunker pic is a German gun emplacement somewhere above one of the Normandy beaches. If you’ve never gone there, I highly recommend it, even if you’re not a WWII/ETO buff like I am. The cemetery will make you weep.

And I’d like to thank the first idiot who mangled the real quote, thereby leaving Al Gore with an easily-debunked “urban legend” about him having falsely claimed to have “invented” the Internet, rather than widespread knowledge of the fact that he had indeed falsely claimed to have “created” it.

“Falsely claiming to have taken the initiative in creating what already existed” is not a consensus view.

Yes, it is. The Internet has been around since the mid-1960s, long before Jr. held any office whatsoever

The inventors of the TCP/IP protocol allowing data to be sent between computers with incompatible operating systems were Robert Kahn and Vincent [sic, Vinton] Cerf – who wrote of Gore’s role…

Who the phuck cares what they wrote about his role? Even if one were to define The Internet as the TCP/IP protocol, Cerf and Kahn embarked on that venture in 1973, three years before Gore first ran for Congress and, per Wikipedia, more than a decade before he began pushing any major initiatives having anything to do with the Internet, and almost two decades before the “Gore Bill” became law.

The whole Gore and the Internet controversy gets really convoluted at times, but the basic issue is simple. The Internet has been around since the sixties, but few Americans knew about it until until the mid-1990s. Gore made a cynical wager that Joe Sixpack would casually assume anything Joe Sixpack hadn’t heard of before 1995 must not have existed until 1995, therefore, Gore could get away with falsely claiming his 1991 bill had “created” something which, in the minds of most voters, didn’t exist in 1991.

Are we still toying with the Al Gore internet meme after all these years?

He never claimed to have invented the internet.

No shit, Sherlock. As I clearly noted above, he falsely claimed to have created it, not to have invented it, for whatever the hell good that hair-splitting distinction does. It obviously does him a ton of good, as all the focus has been on on the idiotic claim he didn’t make, rather than the almost equally idiotic claim he did.

Al Gore was trying to justify his claim by pointing to his support of legislation that allowed the government’s Internet backbone ( originally ARPAnet but then administered by the NSF and sometimes called NSFnet ) to carry commercial traffic. This was actually rather late, as other backbone connections had been established by then by providers like AT&T.

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